Links in wiki

[Ace Suares]

Jordan Mantha wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 6:22 AM, Ace Suares<ace at suares.an> wrote:
<snip>
> There's no problem with the site that I'm aware of. I don't think
> anybody else has reported a problem with it so maybe there is some
> local issue, though I don't know what would make other pages load fine
> in that case.

Probably a local issue then. it loads quickly today.

> 
>> I think it would be very good to add a link to the LTSP pages, which I
>> can never find in wiki.ubuntu.com.
> 
> That's because wiki.ubuntu.com is a development team wiki. It's not
> meant to house user documentation. More on that below.

I totally missed that. I suggest that in layout and with other means 
like navigation buttons, this is made clear to the visitor.
> 
> Right, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP is the entry to
> LTSP wiki documentation in Ubuntu/Edubuntu. I'm not sure what happened
> to the material from ThinClientHowtoNAT but hopefully somebody else
> will know.

I find the list of wikis very confusing. As a minimal improvement I 
suggest adding a Thin Client topic that lists all those thin client 
pages and a Local Apps topic. If there are no objections, i can actually 
do that. This does mean that help.ubuntu.com references wiki.ubuntu.com, 
I don't know if that is a problem. I also see now that there is some 
template on this page!

<snip>
> Open source software is very hands on and do-it-yourself (in a good
> way) but can lead to frustrations for users you don't have the time or
> knowledge to fix their own problems.

I totally agree, and disagree. What is equally frustrating is that you 
*know* how to fix your own problem but then can not reliably relay this 
information to the community. Wrong title, wrong mailinglist, wrong wiki 
(omg!) and so on. If I can think of a solution involving redir, don't 
you think I would qualify as an avid and experienced free software user!?

Still putting that in the right place is an issue (and this concerns not 
just LTSP or Edubuntu, but the whole line of Free Software projects. Try 
tanslate open office in a hitherto unknown language. Confusion all 
along. Try translating mailman. And so on).


> In this case the wikis, the
> Edubuntu/LTSP parts of both wiki.ubuntu.com and
> help.ubuntu.com/community are in need of updating and cleaning up. We
> know that things need to improve there but there aren't a lot of
> resources (people who have stepped up to contribute back to Edubuntu).
> Because we are all volunteers and a pretty small community, resources
> get spread thin and so much of the time people will try to help you
> fix problems yourself as they don't have time to do it for you. I know
> it's tough to get such answers, but most of the time people are just
> trying to help you.

At least you acknowledge the problem. The documentation needs to be 
cleaned up. I think the system of documentation needs to be cleaned up 
but have no clear ideas about how, yet.

<snip>

> 
> This list is generally fairly low-traffic but I feel pretty useful for
> people using LTSP in Ubuntu/Edubuntu so I hope you stay. :-)

I will , for a while, thus far it has been a positive experience. But if 
I subscribed to all the lists for all the projects I use daily - and I 
did that for a while - nothing will get done for sheer backlog on lists. 
I dont' especially care for Edubuntu - I think it misses a great deal of 
vision - but it's nice to have it. Since LTSP is interesting to me, and 
the people on #ltsp seem to be involved with edubuntu, I got here. There 
is lots of other ltsp sites that I don't even go to anymore, because 
Ubuntu/LTSP is giving me most of what I want. So it's not the whole of 
edubuntu I am concerned with, yet I have to subscribe to that whole 
range of ideas and toughts just to get to the LTSP part. I am just 
telling that so you know where I stand in Edubuntu - it's just for LTSP 
that I am here.

<snip>
> Do you have any suggestions for how things could be made better? What
> specific obstacles did you have?

One entry point for all things related to LTSP. Reachable from the 
homepage or close to the homepagae from Ubuntu, Edubuntu and all those 
top level sites. Maybe even ltsp.ubuntu.com or something very clear.

And this will probably start some falmes but the wiki is a lot more 
difficult to use that the evenly dreadfull HTMl editors (like 
fckeditor). We live in AJAX world now. The wiki takes me too much time 
to learn it's syntax. The only usefull feature is the camelcased words 
that (should) turn into links to new pages but the rest is an obstacle.

A new navigation structure that places the documentation inside a wider 
perspective. Ideally it would all integrate with launchpad. I dont' know 
if there are developments to make a good documentation part of launchpad.

> 
>> All that said, I have the following questions about the page I created
>> in the wiki, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientProxyRedirect
>>
>> Why does the links in the wiki not work?
>> I tought I could just mention ThinClientHowtoNAT and then it would link
>> automatically.
> 
> They should.

So what's wrong then? Did I make a speling error?

> 
>> And why is the page that Gavin made
>> (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientHowtoNAT) in CategoryCleanup? Mine is
>> too becuase I used his page as an example.
> 
> The problem is that wiki.ubuntu.com is not for user documentation, but
> rather development team coordination, etc. help.ubuntu.com/community/
> is the user documentation wiki. I know it's a bit confusing because
> you found other LTSP pages on wiki.ubuntu.com, but the CategoryCleanup
> indicates that those pages are flagged for being moved to the user
> documentation wiki or removed.

Understood. I think those pages about NAT and others, should have been 
made in the user docuemtation to begin with. and some more clear 
distinction that this is the dev wiki and not the user wiki. They look 
the same...


<snip>

> 
>> PS for the ones that will reply to this message with 'do it yourself' or
>> 'file a bug': I am willing to put the energy into it to completely
>> reorganize the information about LTSP and make it findable, but I can
>> never do that alone so there would need to be a team of preferably 3
>> people to do this chore together. But I don't know anyone here.
> 
> Agreed, it needs to be a community effort. I really really hope to see
> something happening in the near future regarding documentation. It
> just seems like we can't get everybody together to hammer out what
> exactly needs to be done and start some momentum in getting things
> done. Individual efforts over the years have been awesome, but we need
> to pull together a cohesive documentation team that is sustainable for
> the long term.

This seems exactly the thing I wouldn't like to be involved in. I am 
drive-by contributor. Not a long term discussion tiger...

> 
>> PPSS for those that refer parts of this mail to yet another mailing
>> list: nope. This is my last effort at trying to get at grips with this
>> community documentation. And it's definately not my first. Maybe this is
>> just not for me, and I am willing to take all the blame for not
>> understanding the concepts correctly and being dumb and all that.
> 
> I don't think you're dumb. Contributing to an operating system and
> technical documentation is not easy. It takes time and patience but is
> often quite rewarding in the end.

Well, the stuff on my site gets lots of views. But they are just on my 
site and it's not a community effort and it's very quick for me to share 
my experiences. These are rewarding things. My involvement in bug 
reporting and other issues have been much less rewarding...!

Thank you for your considerate answer. I know it took you a lot of time 
to compose the answer, time you'd rather spend on other things. But your 
post is inclusive, as in: draws me nearer, instead of pushing me farther 
away. Thx for that.

ace

PS If i could help the devs by sending them flowers on every 10th bug 
they fixed, I'd probably do it :-)







> 
> -Jordan